One of the biggest issues I’ve always had with techincal books is what to do with them after I’m finished with them. Usually they hit the bookshelf, and eventually I run out of room and have to clear out the ones that I don’t use any more. I’ve tried to re-sell them on eBay, give them away at Code Camps, or even my local libraries, but no one ever wants to take them off my hands. Even the books that I consider must read tech books are hard to get rid of. So I’ve resorted to the unthinkable, throwing them away. But, I don’t want to fill up the landfills with all my tech books, so, instead I bring them over to my local recycling center and toss them in the “junk mail and magazine” bin. What a shame!
I move almost 2 years ago and purged my personal library, but for some reason these books made the cut 2 years ago. Alas, not this time:
You can click the picture to get a better look, but besides a bunch of Oracle and Unix books, you will find Michael Kay’s XSLT 1st Edtion (I have the 2nd Edition), a CICS book from way back in the day, my old VB5 Win32 API book, Illustrator and Photoshop books, HTML books (the kids don’t need those anymore), some SQL Server books, and even a couple .Net books that have out lived their usefulness.
Now that I’ve cleaned out space on my tech shelves, I have to do the same for all my SciFi books. I gave a bunch away to Kent last year, but I’ve got lots more to get rid of. I found a whole box in the garage that I haven’t looked at since the move. Time to get rid of them. At least I can donate those to local library. They will not stock their shevles with donated books, though. They only use them in used book sales and take the proceeds to buy new books. What a waste of good books, since I have a bunch of hard cover SciFi books to donate.